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Thinking Outside the Synchronisation Quadrant

For many programmers, concurrency means thinking in threads and locks. Thread safety is almost synonymous with the avoidance of race conditions and the guarded protection of mutable state. But this is only one quadrant of four possibilities, a quadrant diagram partitioned by mutable–immutable along one axis and shared–unshared along another.From immutability to actors, this talk will take a look at patterns and practices that encourage thinking and coding outside the locked box.Target Audience: Developers and ArchitectsPrerequisites: Coding, preferably with some knowledge of concurrent techniquesLevel: Practicing

Extended AbstractAsk programmers what comes to mind when you say concurrency and most are likely to say threads. Ask what comes to mind when you say threads and most are likely to say locks or synchronisation. These assumptions are so deeply held that they define and constrain how programmers are taught and think about concurrency: thread safety is almost synonymous with the avoidance of race conditions and the guarded protection of mutable state. But this is only one quadrant of four possibilities, a quadrant diagram partitioned by mutable–immutable along one axis and shared–unshared along another.Whether C++, C# or Java, many mainstream languages support programmers in all four quadrants, not just the synchronisation quadrant. From immutability to actors, this talk will take a look at patterns and practices that encourage thinking and coding outside the locked box.